Scottish Widows trials AI to speed compliant marketing at scale
Scottish Widows, part of Lloyds Banking Group, has started a six-month pilot using Adclear's AI to review written, image-led, and video marketing content against FCA rules. The goal: shorten approval cycles, cut risk, and give marketers more time to build campaigns that move the needle.
Adclear's platform scans assets against relevant regulations, flags issues, and creates an auditable trail for compliance. The company reports an 88% drop in review time across teams using its tech, with adopters including Plum, Yonder, Freetrade, and Trade Nation.
What's being tested
The pilot brings automated checks into the content workflow: claims validation, fair and clear wording, risk warnings, prominent disclosures, and record-keeping. It also centralizes feedback so marketing and compliance see the same source of truth.
Scottish Widows plans to use the system to ship high-impact campaigns faster without adding load for compliance colleagues. That means fewer back-and-forth loops, clearer standards, and less rework.
Why marketers should care
- Speed vs. safety is the daily trade-off in financial services. Automating pre-checks reduces friction before compliance ever sees the asset.
- An audit trail isn't just for regulators-it helps teams learn what triggers issues and standardize fixes.
- Consistent rules across copy, visuals, and video prevents surprises late in production.
Leadership signals
Maria Herrero-Bullich, chief customer & digital officer at Scottish Widows, said the technology helps the firm move at pace while keeping communications clear and timely across app and digital channels. That's the real benefit: faster iterations without losing trust.
The marketing and comms team across Lloyds Banking Group will watch the pilot closely for broader rollout. As one of the FCA's live testers of AI, Scottish Widows will receive direct support from the regulator and technical partner Advai to develop and deploy AI responsibly.
How this changes your workflow
- Run a pre-flight review: auto-scan assets before sending to compliance.
- Use rule packs: map FCA requirements (fair, clear, not misleading; risk prominence; past performance statements) to templates.
- Standardize disclosures: maintain approved language blocks and placements for each channel and format.
- Track versions: log edits, approvals, and reviewer comments for clean audits.
- Set escalation paths: define when issues route to legal or product owners.
- Test creative safely: generate variants, then push only compliant versions into final design and media.
Metrics to watch
- Average time-to-approval per asset
- Issues flagged per asset and fix-time
- First-pass approval rate
- Campaign throughput (assets approved per week)
- Post-publication incidents and withdrawals
Guardrails to keep in place
- Human-in-the-loop: compliance signs off final assets.
- Policy updates: refresh rule packs as FCA guidance shifts.
- Data controls: restrict inputs to approved sources; log model outputs.
- Bias and drift checks: schedule periodic sampling and QA with compliance.
If you need a primer on the regulator's stance, see FCA guidance on financial promotions here.
What to do next
- Pick two high-volume asset types (e.g., paid social and email) and run a two-sprint pilot.
- Create a checklist of your top 10 recurring compliance issues and bake them into templates.
- Integrate pre-checks into your DAM/CM tools so reviews happen where work already lives.
- Set weekly review huddles with compliance to close the loop on false positives and rule tuning.
- Publish a one-page playbook so every marketer knows how to get to "yes" faster.
Scottish Widows moving first is a strong signal: compliance can scale with marketing if you wire AI into the workflow, keep humans in control, and measure the right things.
Further learning
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